


All the Stars We Steal From the Night Sky

by BabySnoopy



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, Fluff, Magical Realism, man idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 10:57:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17959196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BabySnoopy/pseuds/BabySnoopy
Summary: when jeonghan takes your off-handed suggestion quite seriously and you end up spending your nights catching stars with him





	All the Stars We Steal From the Night Sky

**Author's Note:**

> currently super duper obsessed with the works of magical realism and i have been wanting to write within that genre for ages and yet inspiration didn't strike until now. tbh im still kinda iffy about this piece bc i feel like you can FEEL me hesitate in the writing. anyway im happy-ish with how it has turned out so i hope this propels me to write MORE magical realism.

Jeonghan soars like the winds caress him, his hair swiftly brushing against his cheeks and his smile reflecting the moonlight. It’s at times like these you felt oddly jealous about the way he blends into the midnight, even though his bleached blonde strands contrast so strongly against the dark sky. What you don’t realise is that when he’s gliding ahead of you, it allows him the perfect angle to look at you, and think all the same things about you. He knows how much you love flying, how it’s written all over your face with that goofy grin; his favourite look on you. 

On summer nights, you couldn’t help but close your eyes when you take flight. The coolness of the air differed so greatly from the sweltering afternoons. Jeonghan attempts to capture the moment in his head but this reminds him that he needs to study the spells of time and that when he does, this will be the exact point in time he’ll pause; just to stare at you like that a little longer, maybe learn how to preserve it as a keepsake.

You bring up the looking glass that’s safely secured around your neck, up to your eyes and you spot the white dwarf immediately; a pretty little twinkler that was of decent distance. You were getting much better at spotting stars.

“Jeonghan!” You call out and he follows the line of sight directly from your pointed finger. Jeonghan was a brilliant catcher on his own but sometimes he overestimated his abilities in judging the stars that were easier to snatch. He had a tendency to chase the bigger ones, ones that were out of his control and theoretically, out of reach. You joke about how if he continued to catch them without you, he might spend the night trying to haul the sun into his hands. 

Jeonghan suspends himself in the air, with a knee slightly bent to keep his balance and shaping the air below him to support his stance. He has both his arms held out straight and palms open. You’ve seen him do this so many times over and yet it always feels like a first when you witness it before you. The star slowly grows larger because it’s getting near and you feel the air divide itself when it comes close, the wave of heat washing over you like when you take a peek inside a heated oven.

Usually, your attention is captivated by the celestial body moving towards you, though it seems lately that it is Jeonghan that demands your attention more. It definitely had something to do with how ethereal he always looked but you know very well that it was more of  _how_  he was with you: gentle, needy, and so considerate. Take the example right now; if you asked him why he spends so much of his nights catching stars, he wouldn’t hesitate to say they were for you. And now, even with the moon glowing behind him in all its glory, it simply fades to nothing in Jeonghan’s presence.

He starts to make a pulling motion, like he’s got an invisible lasso around the star and with a simple spell, he’s made himself the centre of its gravity. You take a deep breath and take your place beside him, encircling your hands around one of his wrists to share the energy and weight he was bearing. Immediately, you feel the power surge through your veins and your breath hitches at the sudden jolt. How Jeonghan was able to harness all this energy remained a mystery to you, because this was a man who spent most of his afternoons moping around like a sloth half-asleep.

When the star is close enough that you feel a drop of sweat running down your face, Jeonghan swiftly opens up the jar from his satchel and sucks the star into the little glass container in one quick motion. It’s taken months for Jeonghan to master such a move but you see how well it’s paid off in his eyes. The weight relieves itself from your body, making you feel lighter and slightly nauseous that you lean your head against his shoulder and almost slump into his form. 

He double checks the jar lid to make sure it’s screwed on tight and then easily throws an arm around your shoulder to support you. His arms are strong for his lanky figure but you feel his grip steady yourself. The spell he used weren’t supposed to effect humans so much, but maybe without the spell Jeonghan just naturally becomes your centre of gravity as well.

“Come on, let’s go home.”

The large floor to ceiling glass doors on the balcony were wide open, curtains trying to escape with the wind, just as you both had left them. Jeonghan lets you down softly and once your feet touches the ground, your knees give way and you’re about to collapse, face first. It wasn’t so much the flying that almost took the life out of you, but the energies of stars themselves that were still too much to handle.

“I told you, you were too tired tonight.”

You smile weakly at him as he squats down in front of you, gesturing for you to get onto his back. Falling forward and feeling relaxed with your chest against his spine, you link your arms around his neck as he grabs ahold of your thighs and lifts you up. His hair smells like lavenders today and you wonder how he finds the time to study new potions with everything else that he busies himself with.

He makes his way upstairs and just when you think he might make the turn towards the bedroom where you both can finally snooze away, he instead turns the opposite direction and walks towards the observatory. Yes, the observatory that Jeonghan  _somehow_  fit into your penthouse.

Initially, you mentioned it as a passing comment when you were singing a song that’s been stuck in your head for weeks:

_**All the shine from a thousand spotlights** _

_**All the stars we steal from the night sky** _

_**Will never be enough** _

Your voice echoed through the air when you stood in front of the shelves of books that ran along the wall of your half-library, half-study that you shared with Jeonghan. You scanned the shelves to see which row you wanted to reorganise first and your eyes catch onto an astronomy book you don’t think you’ve ever read. Jeonghan was sat at his desk, working though he didn’t mind that you were there. He keeps saying that he’s in love with your voice and has somehow convinced you that listening to you sing made him that much more productive.

Your curiosity got the best of you and you pulled the book out, flipping through the pages of colourful satellite photos of the stars. You kept singing those same three lines over and over again, only realising later that you didn’t really know the rest of the song.

“Isn’t that wild?” You asked, though you’re not even sure who you directed the question at, just unfiltered thoughts you blurted.

“Mmm?”

“Stealing stars from the night sky? You’d have to be crazy talented to be able to do that, right?”

Jeonghan looked up from his desk and stared at you with a funny look, his head slightly inclined like he really was deeply pondering the thought. “Where would you keep stars anyway? What would you do with them?”

You turned back to the shelves and shrugged your shoulders as you put the book back. The trail of thought didn’t seem to linger as much as it did for Jeonghan. “Maybe some sort of observatory where you could have actual stars on display.” 

You go back to humming the tune but the very off-handed suggestion was what kept Jeonghan lying awake, restless that night. In his head, if all his calculations were correct, it was definitely feasible. Definitely something he could do.

It took him a while to learn the trade but Jeonghan was gifted with the trait of a fast-learner whenever it came to magic. The first time around, he made the mistake of trying to catch a red giant. In comparison, it’d be the very equivalent of going fishing and trying to catch a blue whale with your fishing rod. Though even by that standard, red giants were humongous beyond compare.

It was very risky business. He had to be able to carefully compress the stars and confine their energy into the jar without triggering an explosion that could result in a blackhole. God forbid that ever happen because if Jeonghan was the cause of danger to humankind, he’d be in  _so_ much trouble. That time though, somehow he was able to slowly shift the red giant towards him but the heat was too much for him to bear that he let go, even pushing it further away. But every night after, whenever the weather deemed fit, he would go out and try again.

You found out about his secret when he caught the second star, a white dwarf like the one you helped him catch tonight. He had left the jar with the star entrapped in it in the bathroom. It looked like he hurriedly washed up so he could go to bed and forgot about the star completely. 

To say you were fascinated was far too insufficient to really convey how you really felt. Your eyes wouldn’t let you do anything other than stare at the jar for a good fifteen minutes on your own, trying to convince yourself it was real. In description, it looked like a diamond, the size of half your pinky fingernail, floating mid-air in the middle of the glass jar, but the energy it radiated was so strong that if you kept quiet, you could hear it hum.

“It was meant to be a surprise.”

You were startled at the voice that came from behind you and you turn around to see a groggy Jeonghan, midst-yawn. He drags himself over to you and now you’re both in the bathroom, cautiously eyeing an actual  _star_  contained in a mere glass jar. Lazily, he wraps his arms around you and props his chin on your head.

“Now you can say, I really stole stars from the night sky for you.”

“Hannie, is this legal?”

“Dunno.”

“That’s so sweet,” you leaned back into his embrace, finally accepting what a hopeless romantic Jeonghan was. You’ve never really asked Jeonghan for much, nothing more than just his affection and yet he would go out and do things like this. Even when he groans at the mere thought of having to get out of bed to go to the supermarket with you, you’d still find him all dressed and ready to go anyway.

Now he’s actually built you an observatory to store all the stars he’s caught with you and you liked how being here made you feel small, reminding you of how insignificant you were compared to these beautiful balls of gas that undoubtedly turned your bad days into dust. He lays you down gently onto the mess of pillows and mattresses you’ve thrown across the floor in the centre. He then comes down to his knees, carefully taking out the jar from his satchel.

“Oh! Can I do it this time?” You ask, eyeing the jar. Jeonghan is reluctant but can’t stop his heart from softening at the way your eyes yearned for the star.

“Okay, but be careful.” He places the glass in your open palms and you feel the weight shift to your hands. Slowly, you twist the lid of the jar open and you wait for a couple seconds before the star escapes at a speed that almost blinds you and then swiftly finds its own place in the observatory, neighbouring sixteen other stars you and Jeonghan have previously caught.

“What should we name this one?” He asks, watching the total of seventeen stars suspended in the dark room.

You close your eyes and held your right hand out. With opened palms, you slowly closed each finger into a fist and that is when the stars start to move, revolving around the centre where you and Jeonghan were.

You pat the spot next to you, asking him to come lie down too. “If we keep naming every single star we catch, I’m going to end up forgetting them all.” 

Jeonghan follows suit, happily reclining onto the mattress, pulling you close so that you’re lying on his arm, both of you facing upwards to stare at the stars. It’s a different feeling, obviously, from the times you’ve stargazed with him under the thousands of glittering lights. Yet here, in the observatory at home, it’s something indescribable. 

You know deep down that Jeonghan would hand you the entire galaxy on a silver platter if he could, but you would never ask for that and you would never let him. What Jeonghan has already given you was even more precious that not even galaxies could replace it. Though these stars in orbit above you made you feel like your mere livelihood was nothing but a speck in the timeline of all existence, you were bold enough to believe that the love you and Jeonghan shared was a milestone on its own in this timeline. Something that even supernovas danced to or that planets aligned for. It was uncharacteristically ambitious for you and yet you can’t control the way he makes you feel.

“You have to keep practicing so you can start catching them on your own.” He says all of a sudden.

“On my own?”

He hums, a sound so pleasant and sleep-inducing.

“Jeonghan,” you shift your body and wriggle about so that you’re lying on your side and facing him, reaching an arm out so you can finally run your fingers through his hair. “These stars are beautiful but none of this would really matter if I’m not doing it with you.”

He blinks repeatedly at you in silence, like the words took physical forms, hitting him against the head and leaving him dazed. You’re not usually this affectionate in your speech so he’s a little taken aback.

Then he rolls over to wrap himself around you as tightly as he can. “Stop lying. That’s the message of that song you keep singing, isn’t it?”

You giggle upon being exposed though you expected nothing less from the man that read you like you were his favourite book. “Okay, you got me.” You rest your head against him, entirely sure the both of you were going to fall asleep this way again. “But it’s true.” 

After some time, when he’s sure your soft snores have rendered you unconscious and his eyelids grew heavy, he whispers, “none of this would matter without you either.”

**Author's Note:**

> also this song makes me want to cry (maybe the whole greatest showman soundtrack makes me wanna cry) but the diction of the lyrics specifically, "ALL THE STARS WE STEAL FROM THE NIGHT SKY" as well as "THESE HANDS COULD HOLD THE WORLD BUT IT'LL NEVER BE ENOUGH" i am totally in love i wanna choke every time i sing this in the shower because these lyrics are sooo pretty ~


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